


camellias, violets, friends

by Camellia_Bee



Category: Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art, Bittersweet, Feels, Flowers, Friendship, Gen, Hyunggu is frustrated, Hyunggu loves flowers, Like, Maknae line, Mentioned Yang Hongseok, Painting, Past Character Death, Yuto is a soft boi, art students, don't worry it's an oc and the death isn't really described, mentioned jo jinho, so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camellia_Bee/pseuds/Camellia_Bee
Summary: Someone is stealing Hyunggu's flowers right out of his garden (or maybe it's two someones?)He's going to get to the bottom of it.(you know that prompt "you keep stealing my flowers and i eventually follow you to see what you're doing with them and it turns out you're taking them to the graveyard'? yeah. that.)
Relationships: Adachi Yuto & Jung Wooseok, Adachi Yuto & Kang Hyunggu | Kino
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	camellias, violets, friends

There were two of them, Hyunggu thought. It was hard to tell - they were both tall and lanky and quick, and they came one at a time, early in the morning, before his usual wake-up time - but he could swear one of them had black, shaggy hair while the other’s hair was curly and brown.

They kept stealing his flowers.

Every single Thursday for the last couple of months, one of them would sneak into his garden and gather a bouquet. They never took too many of one flower at a time, which Hyunggu was thankful for, but still… those were _his_ flowers, growing in _his_ garden. These boys had no right to them.

***

Hyunggu stormed into the art building and started setting up his canvas, slamming things down and practically flinging brushes and paint tubes around his workspace. It was a Thursday, and those boys had taken at least half his camellias and quite a few violets, among other things. He’d been looking forward to when the violets bloomed - now there weren’t even enough to make a nice flower arrangement for Hongseok and Jinho’s birthday party this Sunday.

As several of Hyunggu’s brushes and his palette knife clattered to the floor, he heard a quiet squeak from somewhere beside him. He looked up, ready to snap at the person for making noise, but softened when he realized who it was.

Yuto stared at him from behind his canvas, wide-eyed with concern. Hyunggu sheepishly picked up his things and set them back on the little side table as Yuto began to set up next to him. 

After Yuto finished laying out his brushes - he always set them up the same way, like a little ritual, before starting to paint - he turned to Hyunggu and asked quietly, “Is everything okay?”

Hyunggu nodded. “I’m just… frustrated. Sorry for startling you.”

“It’s all right. I understand.” Yuto glanced at his watch. “Do you have any more classes today?”

“No, I’m done for the day. I just thought I’d spend a bit of time here working on the assignment we’ve got due in a couple weeks.”

“Same here. Um, do you want to grab coffee after? It’s okay if you don’t.” Yuto blushed a bit.

“I’d love to,” Hyunggu reassured him with a smile. “I don’t know how long I’m going to take on this, but if you’re planning to stick around for a while we should definitely go somewhere.”

Yuto smiled and turned to his canvas to sketch out his piece.

* 

It was several hours later when they decided to wrap up for the day. Hyunggu’s frustration had practically vanished; painting always made his worries and cares melt away.

He and Yuto cleaned their brushes side by side at the sink. Hyunggu had noticed at the beginning of the semester that Yuto did things slowly and methodically, keeping everything in order, unlike Hyunggu’s method of doing things, which relied mainly on doing whatever felt right at the moment and leaving things messy for maximum inspiration. Of course, he wasn’t a procrastinator; he worked hard on keeping himself accountable in terms of scheduling and accomplishing things, but his natural state of being involved collecting small things that made him happy and filling his life with them to the point of disorganized clutter.

As they put their paints away, Hyunggu asked, “Can I see what you’ve done so far? You can look at my painting too if you want.”

Yuto wordlessly turned his canvas towards Hyunggu. It was beautiful already - a still life with a glass vase holding three white camellias with a pair of scissors lying nearby, set against a dark satiny backdrop and dimly lit, except for the flowers, one of which looked slightly wilted.

“That’s… that’s amazing, Yuto. It’s gorgeous, it’s- I don’t have the words to say how much I love it.”

Yuto ducked his head in embarrassment. “Thanks.”

“I almost feel bad showing you mine after seeing this. Yours is so much better…” 

“No, I’d like to see it. I’m sure it’s beautiful.”

“If you say so.” Hyunggu brought his easel over and set it down next to the other. His painting looked almost cartoonishly bright compared to Yuto’s; it was of a simple pot of violets on a wooden table in full sunlight, next to a small jar of golden honey and a patterned teacup full of reddish tea.

“I love it,” Yuto said with a grin. “It looks really happy.”

Hyunggu blushed. “You think so?”

“Of course. I can tell you put your heart into it. It feels… warm.”

“Thank you!” Hyunggu couldn’t contain the smile creeping across his face. “I’m glad.”

Suddenly, his stomach made a funny noise, and he frowned. “I’m also really hungry. Coffee time?”

* 

They ended up getting tea and sandwiches at a small cafe Hyunggu had somehow never heard of but decided the moment he walked in that it was going to be his regular hangout. They had an ivy-covered trellis over the entrance and flowers all over their little walled patio - there was no way he could stay away from this place now that he’d been here once.

“You know,” he said as they settled at an outdoor table, “it’s kind of funny that we both picked flowers to be the focus of our paintings, don’t you think?”  
Yuto looked at him quizzically. “How so?”

“Well, the assignment was to paint something that had a lot of meaning to you - that represented something big in your life - and make it into a sort of scene. And we both chose flowers.”

“Flowers mean a lot to a lot of people.” Yuto shrugged. “They made a whole language out of them, after all. Probably a bunch of people are painting flowers.”

“Hmm.” Hyunggu paused, then asked, “What do the flowers in your painting mean to you?”

“Camellias… they remind me of someone. Someone very special to me.” Yuto looked down at his tea. “Someone who’s… not around anymore.” The corners of his mouth turned down, and he blinked a few times and shakily took a sip of tea.

Hyunggu sipped his own tea, looking away and giving Yuto a minute to collect himself, before saying, “For me, violets hold a lot of meaning. They symbolize humility, faithfulness, and true love, and they’ve been used as medicine in several cultures, but I guess the main thing they mean for me personally is friendship… My friends and I went to the botanical gardens once and I really loved the violets they had there, so my friends started giving me violet-themed things as a kind of inside joke, but it eventually became something that meant a lot to me, and now when I see violets I think of my friends. Plus, purple is my favorite color. That’s a bit of a shallower reason to choose them for my painting, but I think it still counts.” He looked back at Yuto to check on him - he seemed all right now.

“Those are good reasons,” Yuto said softly. “It sounds like your friends are really nice.”

“They are! I should introduce you to them. I think you’d like them.” Hyunggu smiled, and Yuto returned the smile, albeit a little fainter.

“I’d like that.”

***

Hyunggu was going to catch the flower thieves this time if it was the last thing he did. They kept taking his camellias - they were leaving the violets alone now, but every single time they came they’d take at least one camellia, and he was starting to think they were doing it just to piss him off.

He set his alarm for 5:30 AM on Thursday in hopes of getting up in time to catch them in the act.

* 

As soon as he got up on Thursday, he threw on a sweater and a pair of sneakers and stationed himself at the back window, looking out on the backyard.

He didn’t have to wait long. Around six, someone entered the garden - it was the black-haired one today. He gathered a few flowers - including a camellia from the bush - and turned to leave.

As he started to walk off, Hyunggu burst out from the back door and confronted him. The boy jumped as the door opened, looking around like a scared rabbit.

“You’re the one who’s been taking my flowers!” Hyunggu nearly shouted, and advanced till he was face-to-face with the thief. The boy looked to be about his age, though much taller, and seemed terrified at actually being discovered.

“I- uh-” the boy stammered, and took a step back.

Hyunggu reached out to grab his wrist, and at that, the boy bolted, hopping over the fence and dashing away.

Good thing Hyunggu had thought to wear sneakers. He gave chase.

He fell further and further behind - the boy had long legs - but managed to follow him to…

… a cemetery?

Now that the boy was easy to spot over the gravestones, Hyunggu slowed down and went into stealth mode, ducking down and hiding. His legs ached; he wasn’t used to sprinting like this.

The boy finally slowed, probably thinking Hyunggu had given up. He walked across the graveyard, eventually joining another person - probably the other thief.

Hyunggu sneaked up on them, taking care to stay silent. The two were facing away from him and talking in low voices. He crouched behind a tall upright gravestone and decided to observe for a bit.

The black-haired boy handed the flowers to the other one, who knelt and placed them in a sunken vase by one of the tombstones.

Oh.

Suddenly, the two boys looked up and saw him.

Wait -

The other boy, the one with brown curly hair - it was Yuto.

Hyunggu stood slowly, keeping silent so as not to spook the two. Yuto and his friend stared at him, tense.

“You were taking my flowers,” Hyunggu eventually said.

Yuto looked at the ground. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Can you explain?”

“Um…” Yuto gestured at the tombstone he’d placed the flowers by. Hyunggu walked over and looked at it.

 _Choi Younghun. 1998-2018._

_Beloved son, brother, and friend._

There was a camellia etched on the tombstone.

The other boy cleared his throat. “He was… The three of us,” he gestured between himself, Yuto, and the grave, “we were best friends. We did everything together. Like… we weren’t Yuto, Wooseok, and Younghun, we were _Yuto-and-Wooseok-and-Younghun._ But, uh…” He paused.

“Leukemia,” Yuto said quietly.

Hyunggu suddenly thought of Yuto’s painting. Three camellias, one wilted and on the verge of death, and a pair of scissors next to the vase. The dark background and dim lighting, only the flowers lit with a ray of sunlight.

“We don’t really have the money to get flowers very often,” the other boy - Wooseok - said. “But we saw your garden, and it was filled with so many flowers, we thought… maybe you wouldn’t miss a few every now and then.”

Hyunggu nodded. “Why do you come on Thursday, out of curiosity?”

“They clear the flowers out on Wednesday evenings so the cemetery isn’t clogged with dead flowers.” Yuto shrugged. “We wanted him to have flowers all week, so we made Thursday our day to bring them.”

“Oh.” Hyunggu stared at the grave.

“If it makes you upset, we’ll stop,” Yuto said. Wooseok nodded in agreement.

Hyunggu stood silently for a minute, then said, “No. You can keep doing it. I’ll put the bouquets together for you, too.” He met each of their gazes in turn. “I think it’s worth the sacrifice of a few blooms, to give your friend his camellias.”

“Really?” Wooseok looked up.

Yuto smiled softly at Hyunggu. “Thank you.”

***

There were three of them now. Every Thursday, Hyunggu would give Yuto and Wooseok the bouquet he’d made that week, and he’d accompany them to the cemetery, standing at a respectful distance as the others visited their friend and placed the flowers by his grave. Then, they would go for coffee or tea and chat about their lives. Hyunggu knew that he’d never replace their friend, but he didn’t need to. He would be a friend in his own way, and as they grew close to him, they could still hold a spot in their hearts for the other’s memory.

* 

Every bouquet he made for them included a camellia, and a sprig of violets for faithful friendship.


End file.
